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| I see many bright stars in your future... |
When we dig into the details of board games beneath ground level, we often talk about mechanisms and theme. Mechanisms to a board game are kind of like the rules of grammar to a book; they are tools to help a designer (or author) connect with the end user to create an experience. Authors attempt to create emotional connections or communicate ideas, game designers try to create enjoyable game play, but the tools do not inherently create great end products.
Theme in a board game equivocates to the setting of a book; time, place, context for the activity that is going on. In a book, setting is usually pretty important to the story, although we've all seen remakes, fan-fictions, and retellings that change the setting of a story. Theme in a game gives context to a players actions; in some cases, theme is central to a game experience. In others, it simply facilitates the connection between the mechanisms that make up the game.
But there certainly more levels that we can dig into. Something we haven't really talked about before is genre. In books, genres are very closely related with settings; science fiction, drama, romance, historical - these all imply a sense of location, at least on the surface. However, the genre simply defines certain characteristics of a book and sets up expectations for the reader. What kind of book is this going to be? In the same way, board game genres define certain characteristics of the game, characteristics that are not necessarily tied to the theme directly, nor are they tied directly to mechanisms. Yet the three can be somewhat intertwined.
So the genre I"m going to talk about today is the "4X" genre, one of my favorites. This genre is not a set of mechanisms, and it is not directly related to a specific theme (although many 4X games are set in space). It is simple a set of expectations and characteristics of a certain type of game. What type of game is that? Well, read on to find out.